District judge candidates talk plea deals, sentencing

Candidates for Sixth Judicial District Court judge weighed in on plea deal restrictions, the importance of juror selection and their political affiliations’ effects on their decisions at the final Silver City Daily Press candidates forum Friday evening.

Both incumbent Republican Judge William Perkins and Democratic candidate Tom Stewart said that the Sixth District — which covers Grant, Hidalgo and Luna counties — differs from other areas in the state in how many plea deals judges accept with sentencing restrictions.

“This district is a little bit unique, in that the judges here are willing to accept a plea that ties the judge’s hands,” Perkins said. “We say, ‘Judge, we have a plea that this defendant is going to get three months of probation.’ If the judge doesn’t like it, he can reject it and it will go to trial. In other districts, you’d say, ‘Here is the plea deal, and we have a recommendation.’ As a judge you have to make sure the plea is fair, and there are a lot of moving parts to that.”

He said victims and law enforcement get to have their say along with the defendant, and that a good judge must consider all of that.

“Make sure you’re getting the full picture,” Perkins said. “What the public doesn’t always get to see is there is always something going on behind the plea. Sometimes you find out the state has some witnesses back out, or change their story. Maybe there’s a suppression motion, where the judge is going to exclude certain evidence. Sometimes you think, ‘Why did that person get such a sweet deal?’ when the fact of the matter is, [it’s] because the state’s case started to fall apart. They’re going to try to get what they can get.”

Stewart said that the vast majority of cases are settled or never go to trial because plea deals are accepted, mostly because of the high cost of litigation.

“It is so expensive to litigate cases — you can’t afford to do it if there is a reasonable, economical alternative that gets you in the ballpark of a fair resolution,” he said. “There were 16 jury trials throughout the Sixth District, out of 900-and-some criminal cases that were closed in fiscal year 2017. It’s the tough cases that go to trial.”

Later, Stewart said he would like to increase the number of cases which see a jury, if he is elected, “but, if it’s anywhere close to appropriate, I think the plea should be accepted.”

Daily Press Special Projects Editor Christine Steele, who covers crime and courts, asked if the judges could or would do anything to ensure that guilty offenders actually serve as much of their sentences as possible, given the frequency of suspended sentences and the state’s “good time” sentence deduction.

To check the good time deduction — in which offenders get one day off their sentence for every day served without incident, thus halving each sentence — Perkins said the judge simply needs to always keep that in mind.

“What a judge can do is consider that in the calculus,” he said. “If I sentence him to four years, he’s actually going to serve two years. So, if I want him to actually serve four years, I would have to sentence him to eight, which would be pretty serious.”

Perkins did say that judges don’t have much say in the good time deduction, though, as it is set by New Mexico state law.

Stewart said the provisions in question aren’t as lenient as they might seem.

“They are mechanisms to bring people’s behavior in line with normative expectations,” he said. “In the case of good time, the corrections system uses that as an incentive. It is a disciplinary control. It is a tool corrections uses to maintain order. Also, the suspended sentence doesn’t disappear. I always thought of it as the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the perpetrator.”

Both candidates also admitted that it is sometimes difficult to find jurors without bias, especially in a small community where most people have some connection to each other.

“Ideally, I would find no one who has heard about the case,” Perkins said. “But if I can get a person to the point where they’ll say, ‘I am willing to hear the evidence at trial,’ I can trust that. The questions that are asked, the right questions, the probing questions, that’s what gets you there.”

“It’s not always an easy thing to do,” Stewart said. “It is sometimes difficult to tease out what people really think. Not every attorney has the ability to do that. It is a skill. In the end, though, if there’s a doubt, throw them out.”

Both Perkins and Stewart said, when asked by moderator and Daily Press Publisher Nickolas Seibel, that their party affiliations will in no way affect their decisions or behavior if elected. Both bemoaned partisanship even being a part of judicial elections.

Even though their answers necessarily stretched beyond the winner’s authority as judge, a member of the audience asked how the candidates would improve the court system here if they could. Both said one of the biggest challenges in the judiciary is funding — with Stewart blaming outgoing Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, Perkins blaming the nature of checks and balances. Other wish lists differed by candidate.

“For the first time in history, 51 percent of cases in the last fiscal year involved people who were pro se litigants, people who do not have attorneys,” he said. “Right now, if you go to the courthouse, there is some assistance, some forms you can fill out. But there is room for vast improvements. In making things easier for people to access the courts themselves, either with computer based, or making the forms easier.”

“Legal Aid provided a great service,” Perkins agreed. “Oftentimes, I was on the other side from Legal Aid. But it helped. It helped to have someone on the other side who would guide the person through the process.”

Perkins would like to see the return of other court services of the not-so-distant past, as well.

“In this district, we used to have special masters,” he said. “They were a junior-varsity judge, for lack of a better term. Judges could say, ‘I authorize you to hear certain cases.’ The benefit is that certain cases that needed to be heard quickly could be heard quickly. If a district judge wasn’t available or had a long docket, but an emergency came up, especially with something like domestic violence, which needs to be heard quickly — it would be passed on to someone who was competent.”

Whomever is elected on Election Day, Nov. 6, will likely hold the bench for a long time, since judges in New Mexico face competitive election only once. The next partisan election for the post will come only if a judge retires, resigns, is impeached or can no longer fulfill their duties.

In-person absentee voting is going on now at the Grant County clerk’s office. Official early voting begins Tuesday.